French

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 Like Germany and Russia, France had a central figure to work with. This early Pioneer was Roberts Esnault-Pelterie. He did much work on rockets, and his work included developing rockets in an army project, giving several lectures, and publishing several books. The central society for rocket research was the Astronomical Society of France. This society published one book, Rockets Explosion of the Very High Atmosphere and the Possibility of Interplanetary Travel.

Roberts Esnault-Pelterie contributed much to the field of rockets science. He established the ITT-perish prize, which awarded five thousand francs to the most outstanding aeronautical book published that year. He also published two very important books,: Astronautics (1930), and "Astronautics Complement" (1934). He also suggested to the French Army the idea of a long range ballistic missile for bombarding enemy countries. Fascinated with this idea, the Army hired him to do work developing rockets.

He developed several rocket motors which worked on at first liquid oxygen and gasoline, then nitrogen peroxide and benzene, and finally liquid oxygen and tetranitromethane. Tragically, Esnault-Pelterie lost four fingers in a 1931 test of a liquid oxygen and tetranitromethane rocket motor.

Among other advancements, the French rocket program developed an eighty millimeter solid fuel rocket that was intended to be used to accelerate bombs. Also, the French developed a one thousand pound thrust JATO rocket for heavy bombers. Besides these, however, French rockets research was quite sporadic, and good results were not achieved in the pre-war years. A highly occurred when the 1967 Paris exposition featured a very impressive space flight exhibit. It included contributions from many other European countries and the United States.

Another interesting fact about the French rocket program was that they did a secret rocketry research program during the German occupation of World War II. This secret organization developed the EA-41, which was the first French rocket. All earlier designs were either not built or only consisted of a motor.

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